Get back to basics with the foundations of Total Force Fitness: health, resilience, and performance optimization. What are they and how do they go together?

Have you heard the terms “resilience” and “Total Force Fitness,” but you’re not quite sure what they mean or where they fit into the health and performance picture? Read on.

Your health is the foundation. The 2010 article "Why Total Force Fitness?" states, “nothing works without health.” Health is not just physical and not just something to worry about when you’re sick. Health is a combination of physical, mental, spiritual, and social well-being and includes practices that promote wellness in addition to those that help you recover from sickness or injury.

Resilience is next. Resilience is the ability to bounce back—or even better, forward—and thrive after experiencing hardship. It is not the ability to completely withstand hardship but rather the ability to come back from it and grow stronger through the experience.

Next is human performance optimization (HPO). Unlike resilience, which typically requires the experience of hardship, HPO involves performing at your best for whatever goal or mission you have (whether that is your PT test, a combat mission, or raising children). It goes beyond simply resisting challenges; it means functioning at a new optimal level to face new challenges.

Health, resilience, and optimal performance are the foundations of Total Force Fitness, which is defined in the “Physical Fitness” chapter of “Total Force Fitness for the 21st Century” (see link above) as a “state in which the individual, family, and organization can sustain optimal well-being and performance under all conditions.” Being totally fit requires a holistic approach—that is, an approach that doesn’t focus on just one aspect alone such as nutrition or physical fitness, but on multiple domains of fitness. It means attending to your mind (including psychological, behavioral, spiritual, and social components) and your body (including physical, nutritional, medical and environmental components). In order to achieve Total Force Fitness, these factors come together to enhance your resilience and/or performance.

This is where HPRC can help you on your quest for total fitness. By visiting each of our domains—Physical Fitness, Environments, Nutrition, Dietary Supplements, Family & Relationships, and Mind Tactics—you can get evidence-based information on a variety of holistic topics to help you achieve and sustain total fitness. But remember that total fitness is a life-long process that will ebb and flow. And it isn’t just about you; your loved ones are an important piece of the picture, too.

Learn tips for strengthening your family from a Total Force Fitness perspective from a recently released DoD Crisis Support Guide.

The recently released report from the Department of Defense, “Supporting Military Families In Crisis,” offers information for families about what to do in a crisis as well as how to prevent crises. The guide focuses on suicide prevention, following the Total Force Fitness perspective, but the information applies to many other areas of military family life, especially the section titled “Building a Resilient Family.” HPRC can help your family with many of their suggestions:

Keep your mind fit: Check out HPRC’s Mind Tactics domain for how to go about it.

Build resilience through coping skills and other strategies: Find information on building resilience in the Mental Resilience section of Mind Tactics.

Learn about all the areas HPRC covers and what “human performance optimization” is.

The Human Performance Resource Center is here to serve Warfighters and their families, commanders, and healthcare providers. If you’ve visited before, you probably know that we focus on “total force fitness.” But do you really know what that means—or how HPRC got started? If you’re curious, check out this PDF that describes HPRC, what we do, and the vast amount of information we cover. In addition, you may have noticed that we use the term “human performance optimization” throughout our site; this article also explains what that means.

July was the Military Health System’s “Total Fitness Month.” HPRC offers lots of resources to follow up on their recommendations for healthy living.

This past July, the Military Health System focused on promoting Total Force Fitness, giving priority to seven top areas: tobacco-free living, drug-abuse prevention, healthy eating, active living, injury-free and violence-free living, reproductive and sexual health, and mental and emotional well-being. They suggest managing your own health and wellness by making healthy choices between doctor’s visits. For inspirations and ideas that can help, check out HPRC’s ways to:

This year’s Warrior Resilience Conference focused on the family and social aspects of Total Force Fitness.

The 2012 Warrior Resilience Conference in March highlighted the importance of the “social domain” to Total Force Fitness. The social domain was defined as relationships in the unit, and family (immediate and extended family and friends). “Family fitness” was defined as the family’s use of physical, psychological, and spiritual resources to prepare, adapt, and grow in challenging times.

The conference was geared towards the line and focused on teaching skills and strategies that participants can instantly apply in their units and families and to bolster individual resilience. The conference highlighted skills that Warfighters and family members are already “bringing to the fight,” how to use them in new ways, and how to add new ones from a holistic perspective. Skills from military programs such as FOCUS, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, and Combat Operational Stress Control (COSC) were taught in breakout sessions along with information on family physical fitness and nutritional strategies.

HPRC is following up with many of the presenters to see if we can provide their information on the HPRC website, so keep an eye on our Family and Relationships section.

2010

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